Off the network · D
A track, a gate and a yard
Kent has more of these addresses than any county in the south-east, and they share three features: an unmade surface, a gateway measured long before lorries, and ground whose bearing capacity depends entirely on the last fortnight of weather.
A loaded removals vehicle is heavier than anything that normally uses a private track. That is the whole of the risk.
What a farm or oast job involves
The gateway is the usual answer
Gateways on older Kent properties were built for a cart, then for a tractor, and never for a removals vehicle. A few centimetres decides whether the load comes to the door or stops at the road, and it is a number almost nobody has.
Measure post to post at the narrowest point, because many taper inwards, and send a photograph taken from the road looking in. It is four minutes and it is the single most useful thing you can do.
What the ground does when wet
A track that carries a tractor all year may still fail under a loaded vehicle, because the weight is distributed completely differently. Hardcore over a thin base gives way, gravel rutts, and a grass yard is destroyed rather than marked.
So the question at survey is not what the surface is but what it does in rain, and the honest answer sometimes is that we stand on the road whatever the forecast says.
Outbuildings hold more than the house
Consistently, on this kind of property, and they are the reason these quotes move. A stable block, a workshop, a cart shed and a garden store can between them hold more volume than three bedrooms, and much of it is heavy, dirty and slow.
They are all opened at survey, along with the question of what cannot travel at all. There is nearly always more fuel, more gas and more old chemical on a smallholding than anybody remembers.
Oast conversions in particular
Beautiful and awkward in equal measure. Round rooms take rectangular furniture badly, staircases are frequently tight and curved, and door heads in the older parts are low. All three are measured at survey rather than discovered on the day.
A track, a gate and a yard
Questions about a track, a gate and a yard
01 What is the most useful thing we can send you?
The gatepost gap at its narrowest point and a photograph from the road looking in. It answers more than any description of the property does.
02 Will you drive on our field or yard?
Only where we are confident the ground will take it. Where it is doubtful we stand on the made road and shuttle, and we will say which at the survey.
03 What about the stables and the workshop?
Counted at survey, always. They hold more than expected and much of it is heavy and slow. Anything with fuel in it comes off the list.
04 Are oast conversions difficult?
Distinctive rather than difficult — round rooms, curved stairs and low door heads in the older parts. All measured in advance so nothing is a surprise.
05 The track floods in winter.
Then the season is part of the plan. We may shuttle, choose a different standing point, or where the far end is genuinely unreachable, hold the goods until it is not.
06 Can you deliver a full household to a smallholding?
Yes, and the plan starts at the road rather than at the house. Access first, volume second — that order is the whole point of this site.
What is the last road like?
Both addresses, roughly what is going, and whatever you know about the final stretch at each end. A photograph of a gateway from the road beats any description of it.